Friday, 23 August 2013

Quotes of the Week: From Alan Rusbridger's chilling warning to Guardian-bashers bite back

Image of the Week: Guardian's destroyed MacBook

Alan Rusbridger in the Guardian: "The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of
surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on
it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly
understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of
total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks
like 'when'. We are not there yet, but it may not be long before
it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most
reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a
digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the
state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may
one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting,
their cause, under attack."

Glenn Greenwald on the Guardian'sComment is Free after his partner, David Miranda, was detained by UK authorities at Heathrow: "This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the
news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and
imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report
the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of
journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against
targeting the family members of people they feel threatened by. But the
UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously
are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples."

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGuardian blog: "Edward Snowden is an heroic whistleblower. The journalist who wrote his story, Glenn
Greenwald, was responsible for breaking one of the world's greatest
exclusives. Should we journalists, as a community, not be rallying to their cause rather than looking the other way?"

Simon Jenkins in theGuardian: "In a Guardian basement, officials from GCHQ gazed with satisfaction on a pile of mangled hard drives like so many book burners sent by the Spanish Inquisition."

Joel Simon, executive director of US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, in a letter to David Cameron: "We call on your government to explain the detention and
aggressive interrogation of Miranda; publicly clear him of any connection to
terrorist activity; and return his seized equipment as well as any copies made
of its contents. Taking these steps would counter the unsettling perception
that the United Kingdom has abused its anti-terrorism laws to impede legitimate
journalistic activity carried out in the public interest."

Brendan O'Neill on Spiked: "For the newspaper editors, politicians and concerned tweeters now
getting het up about the state’s interference in journalistic activity,
about what they call the state’s ‘war on journalism’, are the very same
people – the very same – who over the past two years cheered the state
harassment of tabloid journalists; watched approvingly as tabloid
journalists were arrested; turned a blind eye when tabloid journalists’
effects were rifled through by the police; said nothing about the
placing of tabloid journalists on limbo-like, profession-destroying bail
for months on end; said ‘Well, what do you expect?’ when material
garnered by tabloid journalists through illegal methods was confiscated;
applauded when tabloid journalists were imprisoned for the apparently
terrible crime of listening in on the conversations of our hereditary
rulers."

Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail: "The Guardian, of course, is almost single-handedly responsible for Leveson because of its — later debunked — allegation that the News of the World deleted the voicemails of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Nor can I help pointing out the newspaper that has shed copious tears for Mr Miranda, held for nine hours, had no such concerns over the interrogation of dozens of red-top journalists. Some were arrested at dawn in front of their families, deprived of their computers for months and released on bail. Charges won’t be brought against some of them. Others will end up in court. But even the most culpable among them never attempted to damage their country. With friends like Edward Snowden, and employees such as Glenn Greenwald, that is what the Guardian is in danger of doing."

Fraser Nelson in The Spectator: "Press freedom is indeed under threat in Britain. The Guardian,
for all of its proud history, has proven a rather unreliable defender of
these freedoms in recent years — especially when it has spotted an
opportunity to sock it to Rupert Murdoch. There is a growing case for a
British Bill of Rights that would define and protect press freedom for
the digital age, giving us the same protections that the Americans are
afforded by the First Amendment. But there is not, and never has been, a
fundamental right for newspapers to acquire and publish state secrets
that weaken our national security and put the country at risk. Any ally
of press freedom ought to be able to make this distinction."

Richard Littlejohn in theDaily Mail: "One might have hoped that the Guardian would extend the same support to Jim Davidson as they have to their own man. But while Miranda has the right credentials — gay, fashionably Brazilian, Left-wing, anti-American, anti-British — Jimbo ticks all the wrong boxes. He’s a serial heterosexual, fiercely patriotric, works tirelessly for military charities, tells the ‘wrong’ kind of jokes and, horror or horrors, was a cheerleader for Mrs Thatcher and the Tories. So, even if he isn’t guilty, as far as the Guardian is concerned it serves him right. His kind aren’t entitled to ‘human rights’."

Other quotes of the week...

Adam Boulton in the Sunday Times [£] on Sky News' cameraman Mike Deane killed by a sniper in Egypt: "They
are a rare breed, becoming rarer, partly because of compliance and
commercial pressures on news organisations, partly because the collapse
of
the new world order means that western news gatherers are more often
targeted than treated with deference. When the military went on its
deadly killing spree in Cairo, the danger was
overt. Yet any sniper could see that Mick, large, blond and wielding a
camera, was there to do his job, not as a participant. Camera crews are
inscrutable as interviewees and interviewers hold forth. But
we shouldn’t be inscrutable about them. Mick’s death is a terrible
reminder
of how important and dangerous their work can be."

Dan Hodges on his Telegraph blog: "A few years ago someone pointed out the media’s habit of concentrating
on white, photogenic girls, jumping for joy at the prospect of a place
at Oxford or Cambridge, followed by a first-class honours degree, and
eventually the opportunity to write countless blogs condemning their own
privileged upbringing. Back then it was a cute and witty observation.
But today it has become just another of the Left’s Mandatory Tweets, or
LMTs."

About Me

I am a freelance journalist based in the UK and was deputy editor of Press Gazette, the journalists' magazine, from 1993 until 2006. I want to give an independent view on media matters.
You can contact me with stories, ideas and comments by email at jon.slattery369@btinternet.com You can also follow me on Twitter @jonslattery